Remember when a bully was an aggressive kid who intimidated or mistreated weaker kids?

The verb we’ve come to love, “to bully,” and its familiar gerund, “bullying,” have been used since the mid-16th century, according to Webster’s College dictionary. Until recently, “bullying” was a perfectly good word, understood by all.
No more.

Since lawyers and legislators got their mitts on HIB (harassment, intimidation and bullying), good people can’t recognize bullying without a manual. In this case, the manual is the state Anti-Bullying Law. School bullying policies are its bureaucratic children.

Lawyers, legislators and school officials try to define bullying by tying it to characteristics of the victim.

Good luck.

The more specific instances of bullying you list, the more the common notion of what bullying is thumbs its nose and skips off laughing.

What Webster’s defines in an incomplete sentence, the law takes 20 pages or so to set out and protect against. Many districts, including North Hunterdon-Voorhees, have adopted the exact language of the legislation in their policies.

The law — and district policy — defines harassment, intimidation and bullying as “any gesture, any written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication … that is reasonably perceived as being motivated by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion … or by any other distinguishing characteristic …”

The law goes on to say that HIB occurs when a “reasonable person should know” that the action will physically or emotionally harm the student, insults or demeans the student, or creates a hostile educational environment for the student.

At first that appears to be the legalese version of what everyone since the mid-16th century recognizes as bullying, but it isn’t. The law requires bullying to be “motivated by … any actual or perceived characteristic” of the victim. The list defines what the law calls “protected classes” of victims.

The law’s writers worked hard to include all possible victims by listing 12 characteristics and adding “any other distinguishing characteristic.” But it’s futile. First, it’s impossible to list every characteristic that could draw the attention of a bully. Second, bullies don’t require their victims to have such distinguishing characteristics.

Taking a dislike to someone weaker — and thinking you can get away with abusing the person — is often good enough for a bully.

The school tough who harasses the class bookworm, takes the bookworm’s money and blots out a lit cigarette in the bookworm’s neck has acted abominably, possibly criminally.

If caught, the lout is certain to be punished, perhaps even expelled. But it won’t be for harassment, intimidation or bullying because “bookworm” isn’t a protected class under the law.

Neither is a student ballplayer who gets off on the wrong foot with a coach. Nor is a kid who doesn’t treat a teacher with the desired level of respect. Nor, for that matter is someone labeled “stupid,” or “goofy” or “nerdy” or “clumsy” or a hundred other characteristics that might define a “protected class” — or all seven of Snow White’s dwarfs, if we didn’t have to work so hard to be politically correct.

The Department of Education is sensitive to the limitations of the law as written. The DOE recommended that North Hunterdon-Voorhees consider expanding its definition of bullying to include instances in which the victim is not a member of a protected class, for example by including “use of personal power or other factors.”

District officials said they’d consider it.

Even trained school personnel can get it wrong. Derogatory comments made on Facebook about one North Hunterdon-Voorhees student by another were deemed cyberbullying by the school board on the recommendation of district bullying specialists and Superintendent Charles Shaddow.

But a state Department of Education investigator said it wasn’t. It wasn’t bullying because the victim did not belong to a protected class.

The school board quickly acted to reclassify the behavior. It wasn’t bullying after all. Done.

The Facebook poster had already been punished and the punishment would have been identical either way, district officials said.